Pages

Monday, September 26, 2011

A bag of my nana's old beads, a bottle of Elmer's glue, some scissors, tissue paper, glitter, noodles, beans.... entertaining a toddler is easy! Look how carefully he pours the tiny glitter beads onto the glue.

I had no idea how fascinating white glue in a big bottle would be. I'm not sure we really even needed all the other stuff. It made it turn out a lot prettier though.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

When we get enough rain in the desert, several storms like we saw last week (or was that the week before?), all the plants show their true colors. Our front yard is now lined with these beautiful purple bushes, only for a few days. This kind of bloom hasn't happened in a couple of years and I think it is so exciting to see it with the sun shining through in the mornings. Don't you?

Friday, September 23, 2011

As you can see, we moved all the desks and junk out of our dining room finally. We turned the back room, which has been used as a storage room for a few years (and was a LOT of work to change back) into an office/craft room for Chris and I. Every room is currently sort of a kids room, including our bedroom. So we decided that instead of making another kids room, we should have a room to ourselves. You have no idea how exciting it is to have MY OWN DESK after so many years of sharing one!
This side of the dining room is now Noah's art space. He has really been enjoying it. (The space where the canvas chair is sitting is where the baby swing will go in just a couple of weeks!)

Hard at work. Please ignore the stool and basket of laundry. Those are not part of the new arrangement. I've actually been working really hard on getting good at doing a load of laundry a day and folding it! One of these days I'll get the hang of this mom thing.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

I went a little early to pick Noah up yesterday afternoon and couldn't resist taking a couple of pictures (look at the content, not the photo quality...). I love to see them all gathered around the little table compaing lunches. It's fun to see what each kid thinks of as a good snack.

After snacktime was playground time. They have a little circuit around the two poles. You wouldn't believe how fast they get those tricycles going!

Looking back in toward the classroom:

I know this doesn't give you a great idea of what the school actually looks like. But I've been wanting to do a post about Noah's new preschool for two months now, so it's about time I shared at least some photos of it. I almost took a picture of my computer screen yesterday so I could post and say, "Here's what I've been up too..." Yikes. Too much working. But, on the very brite site, I'm earning a lot of extra paid time off!

Monday, September 12, 2011

That's what we heard as we pulled into the parking lot at Trader Joe's yesterday.
Me: "A what, Noah?"
Noah: "A blue Snort, right there."
I looked in the direction he pointed, and sure enough, it was unmistakable (at least if you've read "Are You My Mother?"), right there in the parking lot was a big blue Snort.

Look at the resemblance in the two photos below. The first one from the parking lot, and then second one from the children's book (that was one of my favorites when I was little). I was impressed with the observation!

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Well, the huge rainstorm we had in Tucson tonight at least made it cool enough to open the doors and windows and let in some fresh air for a while, but really, with temps still hovering around 100 degrees or so it doesn't actually feel like fall. Despite the fact that I'm feeling overheated almost all the time now (except in my ridiculously air-conditioned office), I've been wanting to crank up the oven and bake. I guess I couldn't wait any longer, so Thursday night it was chocolate chip cookies. Friday night, with a brunch potluck at Noah's preschool coming up in the morning, pumpkin muffins. 46 of them to be exact (due to a miscalculation in how many cans of pumpkin I should open at one time...). It was worth it.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Chris has been asking me to make granola bars ever since the first time I made granola (which I've been making every single week lately). But today was my first attempt. I get a daily recipe email from weelicious.com, which I usually don't get to make, but this one I was thinking about all day long (click herefor a link to the post and the recipe). I wanted those chocolate chip granola bars!

They were just as good as I was hoping, and easy!

All wrapped up for school lunches

And have I mentioned lately how incredibly adorable this two-year-old is? He calls me "mom," like a very grown up boy. Today at school when I got there his teacher told him, "Noah, Mama is here." He informed her, "Miss Susie, her name is Emery."

He's into pretending to be all kinds of animals. He talks, and talks, and talks... one of those little kids who just wants to talk about everything, nonstop, all the time. He's incredibly friendly, and wants to know everyone's name. I can't believe his memory for things, even that happened a long time ago (at least in two-year-old time). And oh boy, you should have seen the dissapointment, despair, and carrying-on that ensued when I refused to let him eat a second granola bar before bed. I guess I wasn't the only one who thought they were awesome :-)

I promised photos of my baby carrier project, so here it is. I had this little bicycle patch that Louisa picked up for me downtown, and I couldn't resist making a pocket out of it since the colors went so well all together. Plus, you all know probably how my husband feels about bicycle paraphernalia...

The main part, headrest, and shoulder straps are padded with a bamboo quilt batting.

The carrier is a wrap around style. Really long straps that you tie in the back.

Here it is on a model (who wouldn't go get a bean bag to put in it). I guess we'll have to wait and see how well it works!

Monday, September 5, 2011

Finally, a day cool enough to go outside in the evening. We couldn't pass it up, so we went up to the Yetman trail for a quick little walk out in the desert. We saw a bunny rabbit and a deer, enough to satisfy the two-year-old anyway.

Noah was excited to wear his "own backpack" and he wore it and hiked like a pro for quite a ways. It even had some snacks in it. We were happy he was willing to spend a little time in daddy's backpack too though.

And as much as I don't think this is a great photo of me, I guess it's about time I listen to all the requests and post one of my giant belly. Just a month to go!

I know the title of this post doesn't sound exciting, but for us, a three day weekend where we don't travel anywhere in a very rare thing. My mom visited for the first couple of days, and then we just stayed mostly around the house and enjoyed some catching-up-on-just-about-everything time. Not that we actually caught up on everything, but we did get a few things done. I even had time to make a new baby carrier that I've been planning for a while. I'll do a separate post with photos of it (I promise!).

We started out with Friday morning at the children's museum with Nana. I bet she'd never ridden a police motorcycle before :-)

Saturday was another day with my mom, spent at tot swimming lessons, a few second-hand stores (with some great finds!), and dinner.

Sunday morning we woke up early to go to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum member's pancake breakfast and found this butterfly airing out it's wings after hatching from it's chrysalis right on our front porch!

I didn't remember to take any photos in between pancakes, eggs with chorizo, and everything else. But, here is a pretty desert museum flower.